"Shouldn't we leave and go to eating place now?" Amy asked. "It's long past the eating hour."
The boy looked up from a thick book he was examining. "I usually just stay here." He lowered his voice. "Sometimes they miss me when they close up for the night and I stay all night and read. I've discovered some fascinating things."
Amy sighed. They had been in the vicinity for over an hour and the boy had been absorbed in huge volumes with large pages and old-looking words. She had to admit, she had read some fascinating things about the world before the Great Destruction. (Who had known they had such things called aeroplanes that could soar in the air, and were powered by propellors and jets instead of wings like birds?)
And then there was the dictionary.
Amy had never known there were so many words. And after reading the first fifty 'a' words, something had stirred within her, a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for more learning, a thirst to keep reading and never stop.
But still. Guilt plagued her, and she felt that she needed to leave and go do what the rest of the Community was doing at this time, but the thirst for words won out, and she nodded at the boy. "Let's stay here all night."
The boy's eyes flashed. "I thought you'd say that." Then his eyes returned to the book. "Look at this." He said. "I've been trying to decipher it for the longest time. Maybe you can help me. It looks to be a prophecy of some sort."
Amy leaned over and read,
"whose demise would set us free
two masks removed, one forbidden act
one death, one forbidden life,
will awaken a people free."
"What's it mean?" She said. "What's demise? And it seems incomplete. Remember Languge, where we learned that all sentences must have a subject and a predicate? The top line doesn't make sense."
The boy seemed confused. "But neither do the other lines, if you look at it that way."
Amy nodded. "Yeah, I guess. But what's it called. It's such a weird writing, why is it arranged like that, broken up, instead of all flowing together like normal?"
The . . . words . . . they weren't normal, and Amy knew that they would be considered "bad".
But they fascinated her and then she realized the boy still hadn't told her what "demise" meant. They all knew what "forbidden" meant, as that was a word plastered on the many documents given to them in school, work, and even the play park where the young children went.
It was "forbidden" to swing longer than three minutes.
It was forbidden to go down the slide more than twice in a single visit.
It was forbidden to slide down the slide backwards, or on one's stomach. The only way that was acceptable was to sit on one's bum and slide, very carefully, to the bottom.
"What does demise mean?" She asked again.
The boy looked up at her from the huge book he was reading. "Check the dictionary."
Amy pulled the thick volume towards her and flipped through its pages awkwardly, still unaccustomed to handling such a huge book, or finding a word alphabetically. She skimmed through the 'd' section, amazed by the many words that flooded her brain and seemed to awaken within her a fresh thirst for more knowledge.
"Deaf. Deprived of the sense of hearing." Her eyes widened, and she looked up at the boy. "Have you ever heard of that before?"
The boy nodded, and motioned with one hand towards the books piled all around him. "In one of these books, yes, but in the Community, no. Never."
Amy inhaled sharply and went back to the book. Debris. The remnants of something.
Debt. Something, especially money, owed to another.
Decay. To lose gradually its original form, quality or value.
Deception, decline, deface, default, defeat, she soaked up the words and their meaning like a traveler sucking down water.
Demise. "I found it!" She yelped. "Demise. Death."
Her eyes met the boy's, and his eyes were wide. "Someone's going to die." He said. "And then we'll be free."
Amy looked away. "But . . . aren't we free?"
The boy looked at her seriously. "No."
He whipped out a pamphlet tucked between the leaves of another large book and handed it to her.
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opionions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel the to the seperation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness..."
"What does that mean?" Amy asked, lovingly placing her hand over the text. "It's so beautiful, so . . . I don't know. I don't know the word."
"Powerful." The boy said.
"Yes." Amy said. "Powerful." She let her tongue roll over the word and tried it a few times.
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the boy quoted, "do we have that? Tell me." His voice was suddenly rough and shaky with emotion.
Amy nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. "I don't know the meaning of those words." She said.
"Then for god's sake look them up!" The boy flung the dictionary at her and Amy hurriedly flipped through the pages.
"Immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority, political independence. Freedom of choice." She looked up and met the boy's piercing gaze. "We don't have that, do we?"
He shook his head. "Look up happiness." His voice was cold, commanding, and Amy hurried to do his biding.
"The state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy."
"Do you even know what that means? Do you even know what joy or emotion is?" The boy was yelling now and Amy cowered away.
"I don't know." There was a hot itching behind her eyes and she blinked rapidly, unsure of what was happening to her.
"Emotion is what you're feeling right now." The boy's gaze searched hers. "You're scared and confused and sad because you know you're missing something but you don't know what."
"But what is happiness?" Amy questioned, realizing that the boy was right and wanting to know more.
"Happiness is something nothing of us know. I don't even know what it is. And it's all the stupid Community's fault. Everything is assigned. There's no such thing as Liberty, and I want to know what it's like."
He met her gaze and rapidly changed the subject. "Do you itch under your mask sometimes?"
Amy blinked. "Yes. But . . . no one else does and I don't know how to tell anyone."
The boy met her gaze. "Once you turn eighteen they cement it to your face and the only way to get it off is to rip off the skin underneath and then surgically re-do the entire face." He shrugged. "I mean, that's what I assume. No one has tried to take their mask off before."
Amy shuddered, thinking of the blood and pain and horror of the process to take off one's mask after turning eighteen. "That's why our mask stays on." She said, feeling the familiar feeling when reciting the rules of the Community, discontentment and something else . . . longing. "We leave our mask on for sameness."
The boy ignored her. "I itch too." He sighed. "I didn't show you the whole prophecy. We were destined to be here, and we're destined to fulfill it." He looked into her eyes, his amber orbs searching hers. "Do you want to? Will you?"
Amy closed her eyes and thought of all the times she'd realized there had to be something more. Her eyes sprang open and she nodded. "Yes."
And then the boy's arm reached out and began to pry off her mask. Amy shuddered and shut her eyes.
His fingers grasped the top of the mask, the forehead ceramic and began to peel the stubborn porcelain away from the skin. Amy cried out in pain and fear.
And then, suddenly, his fingers were touching her chin and removing the last of the ceramic, and the mask was gone and lying on the table.
The air brushed her sticky skin and she opened her eyes and reflected how much different the world looked without her mask.
Hey...
pls review
don't got anything to say really...
just ... omg her mask is off!
And also... thanks to my faithful reviewers, Trivia and iHeartNYcity... ily guys.